SPLENDOR SOLISHome Movies 1998-2015

SYNOPSIS // SHORTDaniel Fawcett's SPLENDOR SOLIS is a loosely chronological cine-poem com-piled from footage filmed over a period of 17 years. A visually striking and expres-sionistic love song to life with all its highs and lows and everything in between. A celebration of the passing of time, friendship, creativity and all the splendours under the sun.

SYNOPSIS // LONGDaniel Fawcett's SPLENDOR SOLIS is a twin screen cine-poem that has been compiled from footage filmed over 17 years. It features everything from home movies, unfinished films, video diaries, video experiments, filmed performances and behind the scenes footage.

This loosely chronological cinematic wandering charts a journey in which film-making is used as a tool for personal exploration of inner and outer worlds, where cinema becomes an arena for rituals of self-discovery, healing and transforma-tion. SPLENDOR SOLIS is a personal celebration of cinema, creativity, play, col-laboration, friendship and all the splendours under the sun.

Director: Daniel Fawcett | Sound Design: Simon Keep | Music: Simon Keep, Jos Dow, Daniel Fawcett, Alex Lemming, Magnus Williams, Thomas Hartley | Editing: Daniel Fawcett, Clara Pais | Production: The Underground Film Studio

Runtime: 57 mins | Country: UK | Ratio: 16:9 | Shooting Formats: HD/Super8/VHS/DV Colour/B+W | Year: 2015 | Language: English | Screening formats: Pro Res QT file, DCP

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CONTENTSSYNOPSIS // 3

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS // 3ABOUT THE DIRECTOR // 4

SELECTED FILMOGRAPHY // 4ABOUT THE PRODUCTION // 6

SCREENINGS // 6AN INTERVIEW WITH DANIEL FAWCETT // 8

Q&A AT THE WORLD PREMIERE // 10REVIEW by Rob Hubbard // 16REVIEW by Jit Phokaew // 18

CONTACTSemail: info@theundergroundfilmstudio.co.uk

website: theundergroundfilmstudio.co.uk

SPLENDOR SOLISHome Movies 1998-2015

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ABOUT THE DIRECTORBritish born Daniel Fawcett is an artist filmmaker who has written, directed and edited seven feature length films. His interests in psychology, myth, ritual, the art of cinema and the natural world infuse his work.

Alongside making films, Daniel programmes for film festivals and events and also publishes FILM PANIC Magazine in collaboration with Clara Pais. FILM PANIC features interviews and articles about the art of cinema focusing on the creative process of artist filmmakers.

SELECTED FILMOGRAPHY2016BLACK SUN | Co-directed with Clara Pais | 60 mins | EuropeTHE KINGDOM OF SHADOWS | Co-directed with Clara Pais | 70 mins | EuropeTHE QUEST FOR THE CINE-REBIS | Co-directed with Clara Pais | 25 mins | EuropeIN SEARCH OF THE EXILE | Co-directed with Clara Pais | 63 mins | Europe

2015SPLENDOR SOLIS | 57 mins | UK

2012SAVAGE WITCHES | Co-directed with Clara Pais | 70 mins | UK

2010TEENAGE WILDLIFE aka DIRT | 108 mins | UK

2006COME ON THUNDER| 80 mins | UK

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ABOUT THE PRODUCTIONSPLENDOR SOLIS came about in September 2014 when Daniel Fawcett set about archiving the hundreds of hours of footage that he had filmed over the last 17 years since he first picked up a camera at age 16. He had for sometime been thinking about creating a film out of this footage but wasn’t certain what form it would take. Fawcett has always had a love of cinema in all its guises from the art house to the mainstream, from experimental films to classic Hollywood, he takes inspiration from it all and SPLENDOR SOLIS reflects this. Of his filmmaking process he said:

“It is the world of myth and stories that I am interested in, the archetypes and how they manifest through characters and performance. I am inter-ested in the play of making films, the gathering of people together in a sort of ritual of acting out our fantasies and dreams. Filmmaking allows us to bring our inner worlds to life.”

After a year of editing, this footage has been compiled into a 57-minute twin screen experimental film that is part autobiography, part home movie and part expressionist dreamscape. The footage was edited without sound or music and once the edit was complete the soundtrack was created in collaboration with Si-mon Keep and Jos Dow from the experimental folk group Fishclaw.

The world premiere of SPLENDOR SOLIS took place on Friday 11th September 2015 at the 35th Cambridge Film Festival.

SCREENINGS 2016Palácio das Artes, Porto, PortugalSeventySeven, Bristol, UK

2015Cambridge Film Festival, UK

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AN INTERVIEW WITH DANIEL FAWCETTby Faye Gentile for Take One Magazine, September 2015

What inspired you to create SPLENDOR SOLIS - what was the basis for this film?I make films to know myself deeply, to heal my wounds and to bring my life in line with the creative spirit. SPLENDOR SOLIS is a document of my journey as an artist, from the gardens of my childhood to where I stand now, this film is an expression of it all. The film is compiled from footage filmed over a period of 17 years, from the first footage I ever shot up until the most recent images created this year. The reason this film was edited now was in part due to a feeling that the weight of so much unused footage was holding me back, I needed to clear things out, reflect on my journey so far and release myself from the past in order to be able to move on to the next phase of my creative journey.

Can you tell me a little bit about the way you went about collecting all the footage, what kind of process did you apply to it?This has changed a lot over the years, there are so many different approaches. Some of the footage is more in line with conventional home movie stuff, images of events and personal moments. But a lot of the footage is of what I call dress up and play, which are the times when I have got together with friends and made costumes and acted on visions, bringing into the outer world the characters and situations of our dreams and fantasies. Play is really important to me, as an adult it doesn't come as easily as when you are a kid so it needs a little work but cinema is an arena where one can play comfortably and work on keeping the doors to one's child-self slightly open.

How does this film differ from your other work?Every film I make is different from the last but the more I make the more I find some kind of continuity between them. Formally this film is different because most of the film plays out across two screens. It also has less of what might be considered a conventional nar-rative compared to the others, I am reluctant to say that it has no narrative at all because for me the film has a very clear and defined narrative structure. I think thematically the film is in line with my other work in that it is about the path of the individual, it is an

exploration of what it is to live a creative life and it is a deeply personal work in both form and content.

What kind of difficulties did you face when making it?Editing this film has been like reliving moments from my past, and I mean this in no light way, it has been one of the most intense experiences of my life. I have had to face myself and look myself directly in the eyes, and this is no easy task for any of us. There have been moments of great joy, watching footage of friends and myself having a lot of fun, but also moments when I see friends whom I fell out with in the past, or moments of loss and sad-ness and I have had to face that, try to understand what happened and let go of any pain that was left. My entire relationship to myself and to others has changed through making this film, people I felt very negative towards I now feel a great respect and love for. So I have been to the depths of my soul, I have discovered many parts of myself, the ugliness and the beauty, and I have come out on the other side transformed.

Did you have any funding for it?There was no official funding but there have been many times over the course of the film's making when a good friend has dragged me out of a hole or given me a warm meal. I would suspect everyone I have ever known has had some financial input into this film.

How do you think it’s going to be received by audiences when it premieres at the Cam-bridge Film Festival?I don't know what others might think, it's a very personal work, I made this film firstly for myself, it is a film that is a celebration of life, creativity and friendship and these are things that could speak to anyone. I set out to make the kind of film that I would like to see so hopefully there will be other people out there who will want to see it too.

If you were to give any filmmakers out there any advice, what would you tell them?The world is full of people giving advice, what can I say... be true to yourself, follow your own path and don't give up. There's no one way to do anything, find your way, if it's your way then it's the right way.

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Q&A WITH DANIEL FAWCETT AT THE SPLENDOR SOLIS WORLD PREMIERE

Cambridge Film Festival programmer James Mackay leads an audience discussion with Daniel Fawcett following the world premiere of his epic home-movie project Splendor Solis in September 2015 at the Cambridge Film Festival.

James Mackay: The last two films that you showed here were unconventional narratives but they were narratives and now here you have made a diary film, can you give us some kind of background of how the film came about?

Daniel Fawcett: About this time last year I had a feature film that I had been pitching to producers and production companies and trying to get it off the ground but it was too strange and no one was really responding to it or seeming very interested so I was starting to get a bit frustrated.

Then I realised that I had these several hundred hours of footage that I had filmed over the last seventeen years and I had this feeling of all the weight that I was carrying around of all the unfinished projects and short films and bits and bobs that I hadn't really done anything with yet. I often thought about doing something with them but had never really sat down and done it, and I think it was sort of out of that frustration that I decided to start playing around with all that footage and see what it could become. And then nine months of editing later it became Splendor Solis.

James: What I really liked about this film is the way it develops bit by bit, the early materi-als are more fuzzy and plain and then it gradually becomes this explosion of colour and vibrancy and then you get all the costuming stuff. You seem to have a really interesting life!

Daniel: I have a lot of interesting friends who like dressing up and who like being filmed!

James: And once you had laid the film out, how did you add the music?

Daniel: There are a couple of little pieces that I made years ago because alongside making films all these years I have done lots of recordings of music and sound experiments on 4-tracks, so the first thing I did was to go through all of that material. There was quite a lot of that, so I inserted a couple of bits that I already had.

James: Bits of music?

Daniel: Yes, bits of music and sound. And then I had some of the score in my head but I'm not really a musician, I don't know how to write music so I got together with a couple of musicians that I know and described to them in my own way what it was I wanted and then bit by bit we managed to piece it together. We did all the music in about five days in the end, we didn't have much time, it was pretty quick.

James: And in the film it looks like there is some video material but it's mostly shot on film?

Daniel: No, hardly any, it's nearly all video, the first section is hi8, then VHS, then most of it is DV and then the last parts are shot on an HD camera, there's only about two or three super8 shots in there. We do a lot of stuff where we project material and re-film and process it in different ways until we get the kind of textures that we like, that might have given it more of a grainy look. If you project video and then film it in HD it blows up quite well on the big screen and you don't get loads of pixels so I think that's why it has that sort of look.

James: Does anybody have a question they would like to ask Daniel while he is here?

Chris: I have a question. Great film, I really enjoyed it. Of the finished product, and all the clips we have just seen, is there anything that made it into the film of which you have no memory of yourself and that you are almost looking at it as an observer or do you recall

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everything?

Daniel: Do you mean if I have forgotten filming it?

Samuel: Yes, is there anything in the film that you don't remember filming or being there or anything like that?

Daniel: I don't think so, I think I can pretty much remember everything.

Samuel: I only wonder because you are telling a narrative, a chronological story and I was wondering if there was anything that has been dropped in there purely for visual effect rather than being a part of a narrative.

Daniel: No, I don't think so. Everything in there I can remember how it happened, maybe some of it I had to investigate a little bit while I was editing but now I can pretty much place everything.

Samuel: I only ask because I don't remember it at all!

William: Daniel, I was wondering what you feel about diary filmmaking now and how much you are shooting regularly and on a daily basis?

Daniel: Am I still shooting?

William: Yeah, in that kind of way or is it very much more about the feature film produc-tion now?

Daniel: I definitely don't film as much now, the last section of the film was things that I was filming while editing so a lot of that was reflecting on the film that I was making and it grew out of that process but I don't film every day like I used to. I write a lot more now whereas I didn't really use to do as much writing. I think that has kind of taken the place

for the time being.

William: Is it a compulsive drive to do something creative so regularly?

Daniel: Yeah, I still have to be doing something the whole time.

James: In the past, did you think about this diary format? Did it grow? Were you influ-enced by other film diaries?

Daniel: No, not really. I remember when I first started filming things, I used to just film lots of stuff all the time, my uncle did say to me that maybe one day I could edit it all into a film but that thought didn't last and it only came back to me recently that he'd said that when I first started filming.

James: How old were you then?

Daniel: About 16.

Karen: I was wondering why you don't feel the need to film compulsively now when it's so easy, we all have phones on which you can take clips every single day if you wanted to?

Daniel: Actually I don't own a phone but I know what you mean. I guess it's just that things change really, I never stay doing the same thing for any long period of time, I am always leaping onto the next thing. I've been writing a lot of scripts recently and making films from scripts, it's just another way of exploring things, it's the same energy but it's got a different outlet.

Fabrizio: How do you approach your scripts? Because you are quite into improv and you can see you can work with actors, so how do you work with a script?

Daniel: Every time is like a whole new thing and it's completely different. I have done

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films where we very much follow the script, I like to do lots of workshops before I start filming so we improvise but when we actually get to the filming we follow the script. But I have also done films, like our last one Savage Witches, where just into filming we decided to get rid of the script completely and just keep the dialogue and create new scenes based on a list. Now some of our scripts are like books with images and poetry, so every film is really different, there is no one process that we use.

James: What's your plan for your next project?

Daniel: I think it is probably going to be a film called Us And The Darkness, which is a film that starts at the creation of the universe and it goes through the whole history of humankind's relationship to the night and darkness. It is a film very much set in the dark, with a dark screen with images emerging from black. So we are going from a film with loads of images to one with almost no images.

James: Well, we look forward to seeing that here!

Karen: Was one part of this entirely chronological and was one part entirely about how you made this and looking back at your life? Is there anything that surprises you or was there any revelation about making this film about yourself and your life?

Daniel: Yes, there was a lot. Who I am now and who I was before I started editing the film, I feel like I have changed a lot, it has been a really intense year. I feel like all of my relationships to everyone I know have changed, it has been a really deep searching thera-peutic process, a very transformative experience.

Karen: Are there bits of yourself that you recall from the past that you then put back into yourself?

Daniel: I think more than bringing things back it has been about releasing things. Let-ting go of any negativity that I have been clinging on to and out of date behaviours and thought patterns that just aren't relevant to me anymore and which I needed to release myself from.

William: Following on from the last question, where there any dark episodes in your life? Because this film covers a long period of time and there's different tones within the film but in some ways it isn't a dark film and I feel as you only see certain aspects of your life and I was wondering how, and I know it's about what you choose to film as much as what you choose to include, but do you feel there are darker episodes in there that are presented abstractly or are there things that you might have chosen to put in but didn't?

Daniel: I think that for me there are some dark periods and I think they are all rep-resented in there but maybe they are not as apparent to an audience. I think probably through the process of editing they were transformed into positive experiences, I brought

out of those darker times what the purpose of them was and that instantly turns them into something more positive. So they might not continue to be dark episodes but there certainly have been a few.

Samuel: Where did the title come from?

Daniel: It's named after a 16th century alchemical illuminated manuscript that I was studying while I was editing. It is a manuscript of 22 plates which shows the journey of the transformation of base materials into gold through symbolic images. I found a lot of correspondence between the images in the films and in my dreams, because I study my dreams every day, so I found images in my dreams that were corresponding to this manu-script and I think this idea of transforming base materials into gold is also a metaphor for the alchemists for the journey of self-knowledge and the transformation of your normal life, your normal consciousness into an expanded consciousness, and I found this cor-responded quite well with the journey I was exploring in the film.

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366 UNDERGROUND: SPLENDOR SOLIS, HOME MOVIES 1998-2015 Review by Rob Hubbard for 366 Weird Movies, November 2015

SYNOPSIS: Compiled from footage filmed over a period of 17 years, Splendor Solis is a tone-poem celebration of cinema, creativity, play, collaboration, friendship and all of the splendors under the sun.

COMMENTS: The latest from The Underground Film Studio (who previously brought us Savage Witches), Splendor Solis is a 60 minute twin-screen presentation of odds and ends from the previous 17 years of Daniel Fawcett’s filmmaking career. While that may at first seem to be a pretty easy (and lazy) way to build a film, not to mention an invitation to boredom, Splendor Solis ends up being anything but tedious.

Combing through 17 years’ worth of “home movies”—video diaries, unfinished films, video experiments, filmed performances, behind-the-scenes footage and yes, real home movies—is a massive undertaking in and of itself. Attempting to make a coherent and interesting film out of all that material is an additional mountain to climb. Splendor Solis succeeds in overcoming the boredom trap in two ways. First, the editing by Fawcett and Clara Pais is crackerjack. Presenting the footage via twin screens helps immensely in us-ing up footage and in juxtaposing segments. Second, the music and sound design play an integral part in keeping the energy level up.

The result is a playful spectacle for the eyes which also serves as an accelerated look at the growth of an artist.

Splendor Solis had its World Premiere at the 35th Cambridge Film Festival in September, 2015 and will be making the film festival circuit in 2016.

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SPLENDOR SOLIS REVIEWby Jit Phokaew, originally published in Limitless Cinema, September 2015

SPLENDOR SOLIS is easily one of the most beautiful films I have seen this year. It is a film made by compiling various kinds of footage shot by the director over 17 years. It is an autobiographical film, and its poetic quality reminds me of such beautiful and pow-erful films as THE LONG DAY CLOSES (1992, Terence Davies), AS I WAS MOVING AHEAD OCCASIONALLY I SAW BRIEF GLIMPSES OF BEAUTY (2000, Jonas Mekas), KAMIAS: MEMORIES OF FORGETTING (2006, Khavn De La Cruz), FUENG (2010, Teeranit Siangsanoh + Wachara Kanha + Tani Thitiprawat), and GRINDHOUSE FOR UTOPIA (2013, Tani Thitiprawat).

Like AS I WAS MOVING AHEAD OCCASIONALLY I SAW BRIEF GLIMPSES OF BEAUTY, SPLENDOR SOLIS is one of the most difficult films to describe. Both films seem to have no “story” to tell. Each of them shows us the life of its director, but shows them without any voiceover and any specific information which we can hold on to. The viewers who don’t know its director personally are likely to get confused about what they see. We don’t know the relationship between the director and each person who appears in the film. Is this woman his mother, his sister, his friend, or his girlfriend? Who is this lit-

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tle baby? Who is this guy? Is this guy the director? Sometimes we don’t know what really happens before our eyes. Sometimes we see some kinds of strange performances, but we don’t know what the performances were all about, the context in which they happened, for which audience the performances were, what inspired each of the performances, etc. We don’t know any specific information about anything we see, but it is this quality which helps make this “very personal” film “universal” at the same time. Because we don’t ex-actly know anyone or any specific stories behind any scenes in this film, we are “liberated” in a way. Compared to most narrative films, SPLENDOR SOLIS gives us more freedom to interpret anything we see, more freedom to feel anything from what we see, and also more freedom to connect the scenes we see in any way we like.

One of the most interesting things in SPLENDOR SOLIS is the use of twin screens for the most part of the film. The film starts with a single screen. It shows us a colorful garden, a young man and a room full of paintings. The man seems to be an artist. He plays with a glass ball. And after he has blown a candle, the film changes into twin screens. I’m not sure what this prologue means. But it seems like the first part of the film is the invitation to go inside a mind of an artist, or maybe the invitation to travel together with an artist in a mental journey.

The use of twin screens in this film is very interesting. What shows inside each screen at the same time seems not to correspond to what shows inside the other screen directly. It seems a little bit random sometimes, but somehow I feel they are connected indirectly or poetically, rather than logically. I’m not sure if the director uses any specific scheme to arrange the connection between the two screens or not, but I guess he might have chosen what to show in each screen by following his own instinct or feelings, rather than follow-ing any specific or fixed scheme. There are only a few moments in this film in which what shows inside both screens corresponds to each other directly, such as when both screens show someone playing piano, show a man holding a camera, or shows some persons dancing in a strange way. But most of the time what shows inside each screen does not correspond directly to each other, and the viewers are free to connect them any way they like.

I think the use of twin screens helps make this film much more captivating. If the film uses only one screen, the film would be twice as long, and might not be as captivating as this. When I see two screens at the same time in this film, I feel as if my brain or the part of my brain which deals with feelings is used at twice the rate of what is used when I see an ordinary film. Moreover, the use of twin screens also reminds me of what Harun Farocki once said about what is interesting in video installations in galleries. I don’t re-member exactly what Farocki said. But he pointed out that for ordinary films shown in theatres, the filmmakers can play only with the editing between each shot—he can choose which shot comes first, which shot comes second, which shot comes after that---and can create some meanings between the editing of shots like this. But for some video instal-lations in galleries which use more than one screen, the videomakers can play both with

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the editing of each shot and the arrangement of what to appear in each screen at the same time. So when we see an ordinary film which uses a single screen, we may have to deal with meanings and feelings created by the editing of shots. We may think about why this shot comes after that shot. What is the connection between the first shot and the second shot? What do we feel when we see this shot comes after that shot? But when we see films or videos with multiple screens at the same time, we might also have to deal with these questions: what is the connection between what is shown in each screen in each moment? Is the guy in the right screen the same one whom we saw in the left screen a few minutes ago? Is what is shown in the left screen happens in the same place as the right screen? etc.

So the brain is aroused twice much more than when we see an ordinary film. Moreover, there are many scenes in SPLENDOR SOLIS which use superimpositions, such as the scene when we see a guy in a black dress running in a field, and the scene of a beach is superimposed on it. So in many instances, we see three or four things happen at the same time. The left screen shows the scene of a field superimposed on a scene at the beach. The right screen shows the shot of a woman superimposed on a shot of a city. So our brain is aroused much more. It seems like we are encouraged to find the connection between these four images at the same time, and also the connection between these four images and other images which come after that, and also the connection between these four im-ages and the music.

I also want to point out that the soundtrack of this film is great. I like it very much. It is very strange, very beautiful, and very powerful at the same time. Sometimes it is like “the third screen” of this film, because sometimes I’m not sure what the connection is between what we see in the twin screens and what we hear, so the music in this film does not only guide our emotions, but also arouses our brains. There are only several instances in this film in which the sound corresponds directly to what we see on the screen, such as when we see someone hitting a cymbal and we hear the cymbal, or when we see a dog and hear it barks, or when we see the sea and hear some seagulls.

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The use of music in this film also reminds me of what my friend once said about how im-portant music is to many experimental films. Because many experimental films don’t tell a coherent story, but show us fragments of many things, powerful music must be used to hold these various fragments together, or else the fragments might be too diverse, too dif-ferent from one another, or cannot connect to one another satisfyingly. I think the music in SPLENDOR SOLIS functions in this way, too. It can hold the various fragments in this film together. It holds what happens in the left screen and the right screen together, and holds what happens in each minute and the next minute together, because what happens in each minute may not connect directly to what happens in the next minute in this film.

Though I said my brain is aroused very much by the use of twin screens and strange mu-sic in this film, I didn’t mean that the brain is used to solve a mystery or to understand any information in this film, because this film is neither a murder mystery nor a narrative film which tells us about something difficult to understand. I mean the part of the brain which deals with feelings. Because we see two, three or four images at the same time, and hear strange music at the same time, we are aroused to feel something stronger or more intensely than what we usually feel. And because our brains cannot understand many things which happen at the same time, this film might require a second viewing for some of us in order to notice something which we don’t notice in the first viewing.

The other thing I like in SPLENDOR SOLIS is its use of vibrant, strong colors, like in SAVAGE WITCHES (2012). I think the use of colors is one of the things which make this film stand apart from other experimental/poetic/autobiographical films. I think the use of home movies in this film reminds me of AS I WAS MOVING AHEAD OCCA-SIONALLY I SAW BRIEF GLIMPSES OF BEAUTY. The use of strange performances and the focus on friendship reminds me of FUENG. The use of twin screens reminds me of GRINDHOUSE FOR UTOPIA. And these films are experimental/poetic/autobiographi-cal films, too. But none of them uses vibrant colors like SPLENDOR SOLIS. So this color-ful quality is one of the things which make this film unique.

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Though I said SPLENDOR SOLIS reminds me of some other experimental/poetic/au-tobiographical films, I didn’t mean to say they are very much alike. I think each of them is very different from one another, and I’m eager to see other films in this genre. I think what makes each of them very different from one another is because each of them is made from the personal life and the inner feelings of each director. And because each director’s life is very different—they grew up in different countries, in different times, in different societies, in different classes, have different families (some are very close to their families, others are not), have different groups of friends, have different activities—their autobio-graphical films come out very different automatically, especially if they made their films by listening to the inner rhythms inside themselves, and let the films become the free flow of their subconscious like in SPLENDOR SOLIS.

email: info@theundergroundfilmstudio.co.ukwebsite: theundergroundfilmstudio.co.uk

‘Moving, mysterious and enigmatic.’William Fowler, BFI

‘An incredibly profound visual song.’Faye Gentile, Take One

‘Splendor Solis is easily one of the most beautiful films I have seen this year.’

Jit Phokaew, Limitless Cinema

‘Splendor Solis is beautifully made – the spirits of Entr’acte and Derek Jarman live on.’

Mark Cousins